Town Pitches in to Send Matt Howard's Family to Final 4.

The small town of Connersville, Indiana (pop 13,000)have pulled together this week for its hometown hero Butler's star forward Matt Howard ..Mayor Leonard Urban proclaimed thursday as ''Howard Family Community Day''..Howard and his family were loaded on a firetruck and paraded around the town main streets.. A Rally was held and Speeches were made..Matt's dad Stan a post carrier and his mom Linda were also honored..It was a culmination of a weeklong fundraising effort to raise money for traveling expenses to send the Howard family to the Final 4...Stan said while he was on his mail route people were giving him donations for the trip...

I am actually born and raised in the same town as Matt Howard here in Connersville and you will not find a better family anywhere in the world. Matt's dad has missed 1 day of work in 33 years and is taking off to go watch his son play in Houston, It is awesome to see how our community has come together to help them with their expenses of going to the final four this weekend. They have been very cautious not to not break any rules in the process and have checked everything out with the NCAA so that Matt and the team would not be penalized at all. Jim Irsay was going to personally fly them to Houston but was told it would be a violation so instead He mad a generous donation to the fundraising our community has been doing which is perfectly legal to do under Ncaa rules.

We have a a very close knit community and this is one of the biggest things to ever happen to our town. Here's to hoping we can have yet another parade next week, this time celebrating a National Championship for the Butler Bulldogs. Go dawgs!!!! Go Howard #54